


Mirrormask

by Ephemera_pop (Alex_Draven)



Category: Popslash
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-19
Updated: 2005-02-19
Packaged: 2018-10-16 17:27:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10576035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alex_Draven/pseuds/Ephemera_pop
Summary: Very very loosely related to the Dave Mckean film of the same name. The Gaiman / McKean partnership is pretty much up there in my personal creative pantheon, and I've been turning over ideas of how the title could take shape ever since the film was first mentioned. I doubt very much that the version in my brain, where this piece is set, has any connection at all to the actual film.





	

The set had to be built around him, so Joey was first in and last out, crawling inside the gently glowing golden casket in the grey pre-dawn and not being able to see anything all day. It was strange to have to listen without watching, imagining the frames and walls and off-kilter windows being assembled around him out of the wheezing of a saw blade, the drag of wood on wood, the shorthand comments of the technicians. Wood chips and hot glue and coffee. The small space was comfortable, and sometimes he dozed.

Dave's voice was clear and direct to the headphone buds in Joey's ears, but everyone else, the Devil orchestrating the creatures and the tiny girl child who slipped her voice across continents into character and back, were muffled, muted, indistinct, and his own voice seemed loud in his ears.

_once upon a time there was a girl who wore a mask. or maybe the mask wore her_

The others recorded in studios and sound stages and sometimes he thought he could pick out a familiar tone in the chorus of whispers and screams. Lance's first takes had made all of them laugh, but without being able to see green eyes laughing and street clothes and comedy claws the howls and the whimpering nudged against something uneasy in his head.

_once upon a time there was a girl who wore a mask._

He kept his eyes closed, low light without shadows soft against his retinas through blood and skin, and the voice in his ear said 'again' and 'a little louder this time' and 'a little quieter' and 'that's good – keep going.'

_or maybe the mask wore her. it can be difficult to tell._

The music soaked into his brain, pencil sketch drums and Chris's clear notes, and he was never, ever, going to be able to hear Chris run a scale without tapping out the counter rhythm on his thigh and hearing his own voice curl in his lungs around once upon a time there was a girl.

_there was a girl who wore a mask._

He dreamt the words every night and Bri's voice giggled over the phone and asked for another story Daddy, not the mask story again, another story but they all started once upon a time, and most of them ended happily ever after.

_it can be difficult to tell. but there was a girl, and a mask, and this was not so very long ago_

*****

**Author's Note:**

> Very very loosely related to the Dave Mckean film of the same name. The Gaiman / McKean partnership is pretty much up there in my personal creative pantheon, and I've been turning over ideas of how the title could take shape ever since the film was first mentioned. I doubt very much that the version in my brain, where this piece is set, has any connection at all to the actual film.


End file.
